ÆäÀÌÁö À̹ÌÁö
PDF
ePub

The peasantry are too poor to more than keep up their cultivation with Takavi [Government advances], when they have met with no extraordinary losses. When they have met with such losses from the death of cattle or other cause, it is impossible to repair them without assistance from Takavi."

Bellary District.-The Collector reported in 1845: "The universal complaint and request of the Ryots is to be allowed to reduce their farms, a convincing proof that cultivation is not profitable. Ryots, formerly substantial, and capable of laying out their capital on the lands, and liquidating their Sircar [State] demand, reserving their produce until they could get a favourable price, are now sunk in debt bearing heavy interest, entirely subject to their creditors; and were it not for the aid of the Collector through his revenue subordinates, one-half, or at least one-third, of the highly assessed lands would ere this have been thrown up. Husbandry is not carried on efficiently, and consequently the land seldom returns what it ought and is capable of. The number of Patta [lease] holders has increased, but they are a poor class who seek a maintenance only in husbandry with less spirit, and by no means to be compared with the substantial farmers who have fallen into difficulties and disappeared from the rent-roll of the district. With regard to food and raiment, the majority of them are poorly clad and ill-fed, and it is impossible to arrive at any other conclusion than that poverty is the cause."

Rajamundry, afterwards called Godavari District, appeared, from the report of Sir Henry Montgomery in 1844, to have been on the verge of ruin. There were famines in 1830 and 1831; the seasons were unfavourable in 1835, 1836, and 1837, and calamitous in 1838, 1839, and 1840. The population, which was 695,016 in 1830, had decreased to 533,836 in 1840.

Gantur and Masalipatam. The famine of 1833, known as the Gantur famine, was the severest on record

in these parts. Captain Walter Campbell, who was an eye-witness, stated: "The description in The Siege of Corinth of dogs gnawing human skulls is mild as compared with the scene of horror we are daily forced to witness in our morning and evening rides. . . . It is dreadful to see what revolting food human beings may be driven to partake of. Dead dogs and horses are greedily devoured by these starving wretches; and the other day, an unfortunate donkey having strayed from the fort, they fell upon him like a pack of wolves, tore • him limb from limb, and devoured him on the spot." In the Gantur portion of the Krishna district from onethird to half of the whole population perished. An epidemic broke out in the following year, and "a man in perfect health was hardly to be seen anywhere."

Nellore District.-The Ryots had become impoverished by the low prices of grain which ruled. The total cultivated area had risen from 244,319 acres in 1801 to 389,802 acres in 1850. But garden lands had ceased to be cultivated through the pressure of the assessment, owing to a fall in the prices.

North Arcot.-The Collector reported: "The Ryots are in worse condition than they were at the beginning of the century. However this may be, their present condition is indubitably bad, and must be improved. The great body of them are certainly poor; their food is deficient in quantity as well as coarse; and their clothing is scanty and poor; and their dwellings extremely mean; all this combined with gross ignorance."

South Arcot. The Collector reported an increase in the population and in the ages of labour, and found some indications of improvement in carriages, cloths, and houses. But agriculture was in a backward condition owing to heavy and unequal assessment, and two-thirds of the cultivable lands were waste.

Tanjore District did not suffer to the same extent as other districts from agricultural depression owing to

improvements in irrigation works and in communica

tions.

Coimbatur District.-The Collector wrote in 1840, that of the ten preceding seasons nine had been bad ones, and the land revenue had fallen in consequence. The trade in coarse piece-goods exported to Bombay had improved, but trade in fine goods had been annihilated by English manufacturers. Prices of grains had increased owing to a succession of bad seasons.

Salem, Madura and Tinnevelly Districts.-The exports of cotton goods manufactured in Coimbatur, Salem, Madura, ◄ and Tinnevelly had considerably increased. The price of labour had not risen with the increase of cultivation. The Collector remarked that cheap prices had increased the consumption of luxuries.

General Condition of the Madras Ryot.-From these accounts of the condition of the different districts we turn to a description of the Madras cultivators generally, given by one of the best-known Madras officials of his day.' Bourdillon had served as Collector in North Arcot and elsewhere; had acquired a thorough and intimate knowledge of the people among whom he had lived; and had been chosen with Sir Arthur Cotton and other distinguished men to form the Public Works Commission which submitted their valuable report in 1852. His account of the Madras Ryot recorded in 1853 is sober and thoughtful; it exaggerated nothing; but it indicated with painful details the chronic poverty of the cultivators.

A very small proportion of the cultivators who were favourably assessed or held revenue-free lands, or possessed other exceptional advantages, were well to do, and, with an income of 30 to 40 shillings a month, were accounted to be very well off. An income of £3 to £5 a month was very rare even among these classes.

The large majority of the cultivators, however, were always in poverty and generally in debt. "A Ryot of this

1 Description of the Madras Ryot by Mr. Bourdillon in 1853.

class of course lives from hand to mouth; he rarely sees money except that obtained from the Chetty [moneylender] to pay his kist [instalment of Government revenue]; the exchanges in the out villages are very few, and they are usually conducted by barter. His ploughing cattle are wretched animals not worth more than 3 to 6 rupees each [7 to 12 shillings], and those perhaps not his own, because not paid for. His rude and feeble plough costs, when new, no more than 2 or 3 shillings; and all the rest of his few agricultural implements are equally primitive and inefficient. His dwelling is a hut of mud walls and thatched roofs, far ruder, smaller, and more dilapidated than those of the better classes of Ryots above spoken of; and still more destitute, if possible, of anything that can be called furniture. His food and that of his family is partly their porridge made of the meal of grain boiled in water, and partly boiled rice with a little condiment; and generally the only vessels for cooking and eating from are of the coarsest earthenware, much inferior in grain to a good tile or brick in England, and unglazed. Brass vessels, though not wholly unknown among this class,are rare.

"The scale of the Ryots descends to those who possess a small patch of land, cultivated sometimes by the aid of borrowed cattle, but whose chief subsistence is derived from cooly-labour, either cutting firewood and carrying it for sale to a neighbouring town, or in field labour.

"The purely labouring classes are below these again, worse off, indeed, but with no very broad distinction in condition. The earnings of a man employed in agricultural labour cannot be quoted at more than 20 rupees [40 shillings] a year, including everything; and this is not paid in money but in commodities..

"Taking his earnings at the highest rate, viz., “20 rupees a year, this would be equivalent in real value, using the same standard of comparison as above, to 10 pounds a year in England.1

In other words, rupees 20 or £2 was supposed to go as far in an Indian village as £10 in England in 1840.

"The English field labourer earns on an average not less than £28 a year, including his extra gains in harvest time; and thus it appears that the real wages of a field labourer in regular employ, his command of the necessaries and conveniences of life, are in this country little more than a third of what they are in England."

We will cite the testimony of one more distinguished officer on the actual working of the Ryotwari System, under which each District Collector was entrusted with the task of realising an impossible land revenue from a hundred thousand tenants in his district! George⚫ Campbell, afterwards Sir George Campbell, LieutenantGovernor of Bengal, and then Member of Parliament, wrote in 1852 the following account of the Madras System :

"Only imagine one Collector dealing with 150,000 tenants, not one of whom has a lease; but each pays according as he cultivates and gets a crop, and with reference to the number of his cattle, sheep, and children; and each of whom gets a reduction if he can make out a sufficiently good case. What a cry of agricultural distress and large families there would be in England or any other country under such a system! Would any farmer ever admit that his farm had yielded anything, that his cattle had produced, or that his wife had not produced? If the Collector were one of the prophets and remained in the district to the age of Methuselah, he would not be fit for the duty; and as he is but an ordinary man and å foreigner and continually changed, it would be strange if the native subordinates could not do as they liked, and, having the power, did not abuse it. Accordingly, it is generally agreed that the abuses of the whole system, and specially that of remissions, is something frightful; chicanery and intrigue of all kinds are unbounded; while the reliance of the Madras Collector on informers by no means mends the matter.'

[ocr errors]

1 Modern India, by George Campbell, London, 1852.

« ÀÌÀü°è¼Ó »